


Twelve's Hair - An Exercise in Metaphors

by orelseatlastsheunderstoodit



Series: My Doctor Who Meta [8]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, I made these gifs, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2019-07-05 14:56:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15865926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit/pseuds/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit
Summary: Written in response to the Thank You 12 prompt:July 21: Twelve’s Hair. Enough said, tbh.





	Twelve's Hair - An Exercise in Metaphors

Enough said? Ya’ll, I don’t think we’ve said  _enough_. If we look past the fluff, we’ll see that Twelve’s hair has been a sign of his  _character growth_.

In “Deep Breath”, he may have dropped the mask of being a young, handsome, dashing time traveler like Ten or Eleven, but he’s still locked down. His hair isn’t as cropped close as, say, Nine’s, but he’s fresh off nine hundred years of loving and losing people in the town called Christmas on the planet called Trenzalore. He’s got some trauma to process, to say the least.

He  _feels_ , so deeply as always that it’s a wrench to be the Doctor when he’s not entirely sure just who the Doctor is without the Time War hanging over every choice and every action. The emotions run so deep and yet so close to the surface–he wants to be seen (especially by Clara) but yet, yet he keeps his emotions in tight control. He’s tough, yes, but it hurts to be tough. Being the “Man Who Stops the Monsters” is no easy task, especially for someone who’d rather be compassionate.

But spend enough time feeling safe with someone and spend enough time getting comfortable with oneself, and well, the hair starts to grow. By the time of Series 9, all of the Doctor is invited!

The hair is looser here, more wild, but not yet controlling its own gravity. But as Twelve and Clara wheel throughout the cosmos, it grows and grows even as his fear of losing Clara grows. And then? Then it happens.

But it turns out okay. Not great, but okay. He can’t remember Clara (or, at least, knows why he shouldn’t remember her and doesn’t pursue her). 

And then he has to oversee Missy’s execution, botches it on purpose, and Missy asks for lessons in being good. So he settles in as a professor with a lady in the vault in the basement. Then he meets Bill and they have tutoring sessions and they go on adventures! And he’s so much more open with his emotions–he understands their strength and the lengths he’ll go for those he loves, but he also knows that keeping that noise bottled up is bad for him and the universe.

So we get this, in “The Doctor Falls”, an open display of emotion and sentiment and wild tangles in front of the Master and Missy. He begs them to be kind, to do the right thing because it’s right, not because they’ll win or because they’ll beat somebody, or because they’ll personally profit, but because it’s decent and right and kind. Just kind.

This is the Doctor that’s always been there, even with the close cropped hair of Series 8. He’s just grown so comfortable with himself that he doesn’t need to keep his hair in any semblance of restraint or constraint to please anybody else. And now that he’s got that, he doesn’t want to let it go. He doesn’t want to change  _again_  and have to do all that again.


End file.
